UltraViolet
by sapphireswimming
Summary: AU. The Casper High administration refuses to do anything about the reports of a ghost flying through the classrooms. Even though everyone in Lancer's class saw it. Including the blind girl.
1. Chapter 1: Stronghold

**sldfkhsdj okay I am posting this now because I can't hold it in any longer. This is going to be a chaptered fic. The rest of the story is fully planned out and will actually have resolution so, wow, apparently there's a first time for everything! _Please don't ask for updates_; they will come when they come, I don't have a magic fanfic wand. Although I _do_ have a series of drabbles detailing the original story line. Should I post those in Turning Pages or in a final chapter here? Something to think about...**

**As for pertinent information: this is Alternate Universe in that absolutely nobody knows Danny's secret, the ghosts are probably a little more malevolent than in the show, and Sam is blind. Timeline begins just after the accident.**

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Chapter One: Stronghold

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Lancer paused for a just a second, registering the change in temperature. Not drastic, just a few degrees, but the shift was definitely noticeable if you were looking for it. And he was, had been humming with tension all morning as he waited for the first sign that it was becoming colder.

So had the rest of the students in his class, apparently, because even though he was careful not to show any change in his expression as he continued to write on the chalkboard, he knew they had noticed it as well. He could hear the moment when everyone froze in their places and there wasn't a sound in the room, everyone petrified as they understood what this might mean. There was a long moment where the white chalk clicking as he continued to put his outline up on the board was the only noise.

Then everyone started whispering frantically to their neighbors, partly in panic, partly with reassurance, partly trying to make sure that they weren't imagining things in all of the craziness that had been their day.

There was no way he could stop them, so Lancer didn't even try. But he did continue lecturing, hoping to be a soothing voice that any students listening to him could use as an anchor as they clutched the sides of their desks with white knuckles.

Maybe the heater had just conked out. Maybe someone had opened up window one of the windows just a crack. But it was clear from the intense discussions behind him that no one believed that was the case. He didn't either, to be quite honest.

He just didn't like thinking about the alternative.

But like it or not, he was the adult in the room. He was in charge of the safety of everyone here. And if the temperature was dropping… if that meant that it was going to happen again… he needed to be ready… to prepare somehow…

If only he knew what in _The Good Earth_ he could do. It wasn't like he was an expert in dealing with threats in a classroom; he was merely a vice principal and English teacher in a small community so ordinary and well connected that would most likely never have to deal with any emotionally disturbed gun wielders in a second Columbine. Casper High had never gone through more than a tornado or fire drill in all earnestness. His only knowledge of emergencies of this kind was purely academic. And what could that do against an actual threat to the twenty children under his care?

Not that he knew what the threat was, either. Not really. That would make this easier. Knowing what they were up against. Knowing that they were actually and truly up against something.

_Something_ had shown up earlier. That could not be disputed no matter how much he wanted to disbelieve what he had seen. His senses had not lied to him. He had to credit his own memories and the memories of the class now worried that history was about to repeat itself.

So the thing that had appeared in his classroom earlier, that flickering form of sickly oozing green and glowing red eyes—stuff straight out of the nightmares he'd tried to never have by avoiding every horror movie and Poe story he could get away with not reading—might be coming back. And this time it might do more than stare at them, upturn the closest desk, and disappear.

But if it had been real, then what could he possibly do against such a creature? A figment of imagination that could dent walls? A monster or a ghost or whatever it was. It wasn't like there was an instruction manual for encounters of this kind. Not like the fire extinguisher would probably do anything to it but that was he had at his disposal. And since it could appear and disappear at will, evacuating the building wouldn't help their situation any.

If it was coming, though, and if this was the only warning that they would get, he needed to act on it. If the timeline held up from the first incident, there would be another minute or two of steadily decreasing temperatures before it showed up. He had to keep them calm. Together. Safe. Somehow.

Lancer realized then that his stick of chalk was inactive and he had been staring blankly at the board for a minute while the class watching him in concern. Clearing his throat, he turned back around to his students and asked for Mr. Baxter to run to tell the principal of what was occurring. Perhaps she would have some plan of action laid out since the reports of panic and chaos had flooded her officer a few hours before, despite the lack of concrete evidence that something had actually been awry.

Then he gave up the last pretense that class would continue on as usual in favor of unhooking the nearest fire extinguisher from the wall and examining the correct procedure when using it. Not that he could really follow a correct procedure when he wasn't even going to use it against a fire, but he might as well make sure it was effective. Or as effective as it could possibly be.

His class soon realized what was happening and abandoned their books in favor of curling up in their seats or calling their parents or forming small huddles around the room. Thankfully no one was quite oblivious enough to think that this was a get-out-of-class-free card and they had the right to start wandering the halls. But given the looks on their faces when he glanced up, none of them wanted to be in the halls alone. This was their best chance if something was going to show up. All together with a somewhat armed teacher and help possibly on the way. And in a few minutes, the threat might even have passed them by. Only time would tell so they were free to pass it as best they could control their nerves.

Miss Sanchez was pale as she sat in the center of a circle of clinging teenage girls trying not to yell at any untoward noise as if the lights had just been shut off. Miss Grey looked as if she was about to twist the straps of her backpack into shreds.

Across the room, the football players tapped their pencils on the desktops and bounced one foot and then the other as they shared furtive glances and waited for Mr. Baxter to return from his errand.

And right in the front row, Mr. Foley sat on the floor next to Ms. Manson's desk, holding her hand to anchor her somehow to this world of chaotic sounds of which she could see nothing. Her lips were pressed together, but she looked as if she did not need any extra assistance, thank _All Creatures Great and Small_, because he simply couldn't afford to give it if he was going to need to protect everyone here. But she was in good enough hands for now. Tucker was a smart enough kid to know not to run off and do anything foolish at such a juncture. And he wasn't complaining about the death grip his friend kept on his arm.

Lancer flipped over the instruction packet and flicked his eyes across the page looking for pertinent information when the blond football player came back with the news that two other teachers had reported a similar drop in temperature, the janitor was checking to make sure that it wasn't just something wrong with the furnace, and they were all to continue on as Lancer thought best.

Looking between pockets of scared students and his meager weaponry, he knew his time was growing short. The temperature was dropping even further and if something was going to happen, if this nightmare really was going to materialize, it was going to do so soon.

"Alright, listen up, people!" he said, taking in every pair of eyes that shot up toward him. "We're going to stay here and we're going to stay calm. Everyone move to the back of the room and act as if this were a severe weather drill. You can bring your phones, but leave everything else at your desks." The class began to murmur but he was not done speaking. "I'll be up here with the fire extinguisher. If something's going to show up, it will be in the next few minutes. If not, then the janitor just needs to hurry up fixing the heater and we'll get back to business as normal. Either way, this will all be over soon. I just need you all to keep calm and do as I say and we will figure this out, okay?"

Heads nodded and then people began to move toward the far wall, furthest away from the windows. Miss Manson was one of the last to move, considering her slower pace, and given a little bit wider of a berth as the class migrated, led by the arm by Mr. Foley. They finished the short trip and took their places wedged in the corner of the room.

Lancer lugged up the red canister to one of the last rows of chairs, close enough to his students that he would be protecting anything that came at them and far enough away that he might still fend off an attack before it got to them.

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. He was well aware of the tension running high, of the conversations in hushed voices. Of Miss Manson sightlessly clutching onto her friend's arm like it was the only thing keeping her together and the way he held her hand confirmed the sentiment. How the boy whispered that it would be okay and that everything would turn out fine but she shook her head and how he thought he took her side of the argument, given that he was about to fight an apparition with a fire extinguisher.

He heard how the students comforted each other with soft noises, words that probably wouldn't make sense if they were all in their right minds, if they weren't waiting for an impossible creature to come kill them.

Others tried to keep the topic of conversation as normal as possible. Some girls talking about a party they were planning… the football team complaining about how hard practices had been this week… the band members discussing the merits of this year's choice of performance pieces…

"Think of something else, Sam. Just… anything else… it will help," Tucker encouraged from the end of the huddled group.

"Okay," Sam whispered shakily, fisting his shirt in her hands. "When can Danny come back to school?"

"Mrs. F said the doctors were going to keep him overnight for observation, but it sounded like he would be okay to come home after that. I don't think anyone knows what really happened, but I don't think he's going to grow two heads or anything, so that's good," he chuckled.

Lancer pulled his attention back to planning his line of defence as the temperature continued to plummet until he could see his breath. It was his job to make sure that when Mr. Fenton did come home from the hospital, he would still have a homeroom class to come back to.


	2. Chapter 2: Accident

**I'm pretty sure there was a conspiracy to keep me from writing this.**

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Chapter Two: Accident

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Two days later, school was still in session, but Lancer's classroom was missing more students than there were sitting at their desks.

He was not surprised by the drastic loss in attendance.

The school administration might not believe that anything supernatural had floated through their classroom and terrorized his English class. The principal might not be able to shut everything down for a few days as they investigated the cracked cinder blocks in the back of the room, or the shattered window, or the fact that the thermometer was perpetually stuck as about fifteen degrees colder than the actual temperature of the classroom as confirmed by the repairmen Casper High had finally called in due to numerous complaints about the boiler throughout the week.

They might not have had a good explanation for why an otherwise set and stolid teacher suddenly went crazy spouting nonsense about _something_ appearing out of nowhere and attacking his class in the middle of a school day. They certainly didn't have a reasonable explanation for why he felt the need to use up the contents of an entire fire extinguisher before denting it beyond repair when even he readily agreed that no one had sounded the alarm for any smoke or flames.

There was only so much they could turn a blind eye to, but honestly, the administration had no clue what to do with a situation like this. Especially since the teacher in question was also the vice principal of the school and did have the authority to go to the county level with complaints of negligence should they turn a completely blind eye and ignore his concerns.

But honestly, what could they do? He thought that there had been a _ghost_. A ghost!

There wasn't a course of action laid out for in case of ghostly emergencies because such entities simply did not exist. So how was the administration supposed to be expected to made preparations against them on a teacher's say so.

Perhaps launching an investigation into the purity of the drinking water would better serve the community and be a better use of time and resources. First the Fentons and now this…

Because, really, the hardest part to believe about this entire thing was that it was Lancer bringing up the claim. He had always been so dependable amidst the insanity of the high school. They could well understand how the teenagers of his class would corroborate the story. There would be no easier way of getting out of class than to have the school shut down for a week because they had been telling ghost stories. But for the teacher not only to back up this story, but to be the foremost proponent of it was something they didn't know what to do with.

Maybe Lancer was just overwhelmed and his class was taking advantage of the situation to request days off. If that was the case, they couldn't cave. Especially not to something as silly as a cry of "ghosts!" because what would the parents think of the reason their children had been deprived of a fine government funded public education for a week? Or more, at the rate the requests were flying into the office.

They decided that perhaps Lancer could be allowed to crack and lose it every once in a while. Maybe that was even a good thing, to let him let it all out in a blast of fire hydrant steam instead of having a midlife crisis and taking off for a week while they scrambled to find a substitute and a way to fix things. They could grant him that leeway of a crazy day or two. So they ignored his protestations that something had happened and something needed to be done to prevent it from happening again.

Classes were to continue as usual.

Minus, of course, the dozen or so students who had managed to stay home "sick." Lancer's classroom had more students missing than were present. It was the one time he didn't mind, though. He'd kept his eyes and ears glued to the news— radio in the car and bath, TV during dinner and as he fell asleep at night— but so far, nothing had been reported elsewhere in Amity. It seemed that being home would be safer than attending the school for now.

But it didn't keep Lancer teaching with one eye to the window and every nerve taught for the slightest suspicion that something out of the normal was about to happen, in which case, he had absolutely no compunction in dropping everything and moving the class to the back of the room or the janitor's storage closet across the hall.

They had gotten used to moving quickly. It was almost becoming a system, but no one really minded the breaks in the lesson. Not when the possibility of being thrown into the wall like the desk had been was a very real alternative. It was so hard to concentrate on the lesson when you knew that at any second you might need to evacuate that they weren't really advancing studies or preparations for tests even while they were all sitting and Lancer was still lecturing.

He would give up even that pretense entirely if that didn't mean that the class would soon descend into an undefendable chaotic mess. And who knew, perhaps they would be able to learn some basics of literary analysis before the year was out, despite everything.

But until the rest of the school administration saw sense and realized that there was actually something happening and they needed to do something about it other than turning a blind eye and sending out repairmen, the entire situation was in Lancer's hands alone. And whatever makeshift weaponry he could whip up.

He had gotten creative. Commandeering the fire extinguisher, of course. He didn't imagine that the smoke had really scared the thing away, but he had exhausted the spray and when it cleared, nothing was there anymore so the English teacher figured that it was worth another shot. Maybe the thing was just looking for easy targets and with the students concealed, it would leave them alone. So he ensured that he had unlimited access to full canisters no matter how much Ishiyama complained.

Next was the long unused pointer that had lain like a forgotten pool cue in the corner behind his desk. One of the kids from the track and field team who was pretty handy with a javelin was set in charge of that particular weapon.

He'd persuaded Tetslaff to lend a few of his students a few select items that would normally have never been allowed outside of the gymnasium. Things which she usually held under strict lock and key. Or that had been left unclaimed in the lost and found so long that their owners had probably graduated years ago and had therefore been left languishing forever. The Vice Principal's authority, however, meant that they were allowed a few things in case of emergency.

None of the teenagers in his class were fooling around. The bullies were just as scared as their normal victims, because who knew what would come around the corner, or through the wall, at any moment? It was good to be prepared, even if their only weapons couldn't really be considered weapons at all: an air horn from the swim invitational they held each year, a transparent red plastic whistle, two ankle weights whose leather straps were threatening to crack in half, and a rusting dumbbell.

What they would do with such an assortment of things, Lancer did not know, but he had learned over the past two days that his class was resourceful and ready to do whatever it took to keep the ghosts at bay, no matter what anyone else thought. They were ready for anything at a moment's notice.

So when the door to the classroom opened in the middle of their lecture, there were a few gasps and squeaks of fright and nearly everyone was already out of their seat scuttling toward the back walls or reaching for their designated task before they realized that there was no need for alarm. A ghost wouldn't be opening the door anyway— it would just zoom in with only cooler temperatures for warning.

A very familiar face appeared from around the door frame, a confused look on his face as he took in the odd behavior of the class… Valerie wielding a pool stick like she knew what she was doing with it and Star fumbling with the lanyard of a whistle she had been about to blow and Nathan hiding under his desk and their teacher ignoring all of it.

Danny Fenton walked further into the room, catching sight of his two best friends in the front row. Tucker made eye contact, gave a head nod and a little wave before turning to Sam and telling her who had had just come in. He froze when he caught sight of the expression on her face, eyes wide and hand clapped over her mouth as if she had just caught herself from screaming.

That, more than anything else, unsettled the black haired teenager. After many years of friendship with Sam Manson, he knew that the three things she prided herself on most were her independence, from anyone who thought her condition warranted extra condescending assistance as well as parents who insisted that she wear brighter colors (as if she could see them), her activism, and the fact that she did not, ever, scream.

He walked into the classroom slightly dazed.

"Mr. Lancer?" he asked hesitantly as he saw for the first time how the man had grabbed onto the fire extinguisher on his desk with a death hold.

"Ah," the teacher said, releasing his grip and smoothing out his tie. "Mr. Fenton. It's… good to see you back. All well?"

"Yeah…" Danny replied, shrugging one shoulder and turning to give a better view of the arm still slung in a blue and white cast. "Just a couple bumps and bruises. Not a big deal. They said they couldn't find anything else wrong with me so they let me out and, uh, here I am."

Lancer stared at him for a moment, trying to process the rapid change of emotions he had just gone through as he realized that the boy was not a threat and that he had come out of his accident relatively unscathed and that he had come back to Casper High at possibly the worst possible moment. Not that he would wish anyone extra time in a sterile disinfected white room, but he would rather have had his student still in the hospital than come to school not knowing what had been happening in his absence and, though lack of knowledge, end up needing to go back to the hospital for something worse than whatever had happened to him before.

"Uhh…" Danny waved his good hand in front of him. "Mr. Lancer, is everything okay? I mean," he broke off to stare around the classroom. "Everyone seems… kinda… jumpy or something…"

The English teacher cleared his throat. "Please take a seat, Mr. Fenton and Mr. Foley can catch you up on the state of affairs."

Danny raised an eyebrow at the implication that the vice principal of the school would not only let him talk to his friends during class, but actually order them to do it. Everyone in the entire room stared at him as he shrugged and crossed the classroom to take his seat next to Sam and Tucker.

"Hey, guys," he whispered as he sat down.

"Hey, man, good to see you," Tucker said. "Your parents weren't giving out too many details there. We weren't sure when you were coming back."

"Yeah, well," Danny hedged, "things were weird and we didn't know how long they'd take. But I'm here now. And everything's… fine."

"Weird, how?" Sam asked, her wide eyes fixed on Danny.

"Well, nice to see you too," Danny scoffed. "Just… weird. I dunno. Never mind, so tell me what's going on here. Where is everyone? And why is everything so…" he waved his hand around at the rest of his class, "crazy?"

"Dude, you don't believe what's been going on here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you had your phone on you, I would not have stopped texting you about this."

"I was in the hospital, Tuck!" Danny protested. "How could I have had my phone on me?"

"I know, I know, but… you sitting down for this?"

"Yes, Tucker, I am sitting. At my desk," Danny deadpanned.

"Okay, okay, but look, you're going to think I'm crazy…"

"Tucker, my parents believe in ghosts. Whatever you're going to say, trust me, I've heard weirder."

"Yeah, right, umm," Tucker let out a nervous chuckle.

"What is going on here?" Danny pressed when his friend started fiddling with the flap on his cargo pants instead of answering.

"Ghosts," he spit out quickly. "In the school."

Danny stared at him. "Ghosts?" he repeated slowly.

"In the school," Tucker confirmed.

Danny's face paled until he was almost white and looked like he was about to sway out of his seat. Sam grabbed his arm.

"Ghosts?" he asked weakly, looking to her for confirmation. Sam nodded, wide eyed.

"Ghosts…" he repeated again in a hoarse voice.


End file.
